Coaching Over Managing: Motivate Your Team
A manager points out mistakes, but a coach shows how to prevent those mistakes in the future
Source | www.entrepreneur.com | David Meltzer
To be an effective leader, you need to understand the difference between coaching and managing your team. A coach takes on a much more dynamic role than a manager. A manager is charged with putting pragmatic logistics systems into place. A coach is there to help inspire the team to perform at their level best — to bring their A-game.
This is not to diminish the capacity of a manager, who organizes business units, helps to “run the show,” has a different action item list from a coach and deals with overseeing all the administrative tasks that are needed to run a company day-to-day. You need to have both in a business (or at least a person who possess skills that apply to both) in order to succeed.
Coaching vs. Managing
One of the most important distinctions between the two is that, in general, managing centers more around giving direction and is devoid of inspiration. As a coach, I can instruct everybody in the office in the principles of gratitude, empathy, accountability and effective communication. But, we need managerial guidance in what we’re tasked with accomplishing daily. If there are no efficiencies, systems or processes in place, nothing much is going to get done.
With managing, if there are only rules, procedures and systems in place, but no motivation to inspire a team to apply themselves to achieve top performance, you will never fully see your desired results.